The Dark Times
by Dark Diamond 13
Summary: Four years along in the Fosion Invasion. The War is getting worse with each passing day. And the heroes of the Earth are already dealing with a lot of problems, and things are getting worse... Wi they make it through them to save the world? Or will they fail and drag the world to hell? Rated T for gore and occssional language.
1. 1 The Incident: Part One

**Author's Note:** Okay, then. I might as well explain this. I recently became immersed in FusionFall again, and now I've started to write this fanfiction about it. It is... essentially taking FusionFall and casting it into the deepest pit of dystopia that my imagination can generate. It contains most of the CN cartoons, but I'll be focusing more on a few key ones. There will be several plotlines going on at once.

Also, this contains a bit more than FF. Heads-up, I'm mixing up Ben 10 with some Grim Tales from Down Below ideas. If you want to understand the madness I'm putting him through, see if you can check out the comic by Bleedman. I'm also introducing some dark backstory and bizzare, pulled-out-from-my-insane-imagination mythology. Added to that, this is DARK. the world has pretty much gone to HECK and on top of that, the heroes are getting laid down.

I might put more info on my profile later, but this is the summary of what I'm planning on. Now, enough of my rambling! On with the story!

* * *

 **CHAPTER ONE**

Black.

Benjamin Kirby Tennyson, Wielder of the Omnitrix, one of the chief commanders of the World Protection Agency and galaxy-recognized superhero, could only see black. But he remembered how he'd gotte into this void, hovering in nowhere. He remembered...

He could still feel the heat of battle, see the pools of blood, practically inhale the scent of outright fear in the air... he could still see the Beast, looming overhim, reaching towards him with the intent of ripping him to shreds...

But she had stepped in fron of him. Sandra White, a recruit who had fairly quickly worked her way up the ranks of the WPA to become a Commander's Assistant. Specifically, his.

From Day One, they had established a manageable routine, for official business at least. During their down-time, she... could become very annoying. But, apart from those two things, they had plenty of other things to worry about. If they started arguing about what to do with ther little battalion, it would starrttaxing on their sanities.

Instead, they barely interacted during the business of war and combat. Sure, at that particular time they had an official respect for each other, and she was nice at times but nothing else was going on! No matter what the gossippers insinuated.

The point was, nothing serious. Nothing at all.

Then she willingly got dismembered in his place.

He saw her getting carried up; she could dismantle the darn thing if she was angry enough. She stared at it, determined, her fierce expression mocking it, daring it to do its worst. She was going to end it. She would. She'd played the 'Damsel in distress' ploy on several monsters, and she ended up ripping them to pieces in the end.

But then a clawed tentacle came out of nowhere, getting right in his face... ... and taking his right eye with it as it retracted He yelled, stumbling to the ground. He was half-blind, he had an empty eye socket and oh dear God, THE BLOOD WAS RUSHING OUT, **THERE WAS SO MUCH BLOOD, OH GOD-**

-and then a second, louder meaty rip came from above. A leg fell on the ground before him, the tissue spilling out of ont end, dripping red blood onto the ground. A well-abused neaker along with the leg of the faction's 'Plumber' uniform.

Her battle-tentacles came next, twitching as green blood dripped from them. He raised his head up, and it felt as if it was in slow motion. Sandra looked down, her expression trying to be strong but failing, pleading, crying...

"SANDRA?!" His vocal cords choked out her name, strangled though they were.

"BEN, RUN!" Red and green blood dripped out of her mouth, onto her chin, choking her slightly. "GET OUT OF-"

-her arm was ripped off, cutting off her statement with a scream. Second leg, with more tissue; some things that looked suspiciously like organs and bone protruded from one end.

More tentacles.

More blood.

Red and green blood.

Black and green tentacles.

Rips.

He continued staring in shock. Her face was covered in blood. The agony in her eyes was heartbreaking. Unshed tears shone, but she was too proud to let them out. She'd be brave, 'til the end.

Then the rest of her was dropped, directly into a pool of her own blood, a bizzare mix of red and green, pointing her out as somone with supernatural powers.

Maimed, she looked at him, begging him to end her misery...

"Why?" She was just a recruit, maybe a fangirl, but still. Dying in his place, for nothing? No... that made no sense, why would she do that?

She seemed to hear him. Or maybe she'd guessed.

She morphed, her appearance shifting to a more familiar one. Gray eyes became green, a teenage body turned to an adult, the one remaining arm supporting her. Black hair became blonde, the face changed to one that was even more familiar to him...

"M-mom?" His mother. His mother was dying in his place. Then it hit him, things about "Sandra White" that he'd noticed.

She had come, fighting beside him from the start. In battle, always clear-headed, in planning convincing him not to risk himself too much. Everything apart from battle and planning, she was there to push him. Watching him, taking care of him. They'd had a very brother-and-sister-like dynamic, like he and Gwen had had when they were kids. He'd never suspected it, not for a second...

She'd always teased, joking around. But despite all that, if he did anything that could potentially be risky, she jumped on his case. It had gotten to the point that the mocking phrase, "Who do you think you are; my mom?" had come as one of his favourite retorts to her incessant nagging. She'd never replied to that; at times she looked away, almost as if she was hurt...

"Mom... I... I..." Ben Tennyson had sworn to protect people. Sworn to protect the planet Earth. Sworn to protect them, no matter what. He was even planning to see if he could get some interplanetary patrols later on, when he was older.

And here he was, looking at his mother. He couldn't even protect his own mother, and here he was, parading as a superhero when he couldn't even protect his own family, for God's sake!

Sandra Tenyson watched as her son broke down, his tears mixing with blood ans sweat as he grit his teeth, no doubt blaming himself...

Selflessness. Both his greatest strength and weakness.

"Ben... listen to me..." He looked up.

"Mom, I'm so sorry..."

"Don't be. I wanted to protect you and make sure you were safe. I did, and you are safe."

But... But you're gonna die... it's all my fault..."

"Stop that," she hissed. Her teeth lengthened into fangs and her eyes glowed an ominous green. "None of this is your fault. I bargained for this. I knew that I could die. It was my choice, Benjamin."

"...it should be me dying, not you..."

"No. Even if you were dying now, I would be doing everything I could to save you." Her features returned to normal. "Ben... forgive yourself. You cannot save everone."

"But... But I..." God, the boy was taking it much harder than he was supposed to. If she didn't do something soon, he would hold this as his fault as long as he lived...

She felt a twinge. Her time was running out. A rumble shook the earth. And that thing was still there. She had to remember that.

There was no time. She could either explain beforehand, or just do it. Another rumble. No explanation. Nergal could handle it. She needed to do it, and do it now. Luckily, Carl wouldn't know. The clone was an exact copy. Ben would know that soon, but the additional mental scar tissue...

Not like she could do anything about it. Her decision was final.


	2. 2 The Incident: Part Two

**CHAPTER TWO**

"Benjamin." He looked up sharply. Good. The ancient words came to her lips with ease as she began the ritual. She may not live, but he would have a keepsake of her... in a specific sense. She dug her fingers into her right eye...

Ben stared. His mother was dying, and was muttering something he couldn't understand. On top of that, she was clawing her own eye out. What was all this? Wasn't she in enough pain?

"M-Mom-" He didn't get to finish. She yanked it out, pulling out all of the blood vessels behind it in the process. She managed to rip them off. She put the eye into his empty eye socket, the iris facing her.

Ben suddenly had two eyes that could see. His mother dropped to the ground. He reached out to touch her.

Then the tentacles stirred, worming towards him. He stared, stumbling back. They stll slithered towards him, enveloping him, choking him...

And it all went black.

That was what happened. Now, he was in a black void, looking around, thinking. He took a few tentative steps forward. They echoed, making it all the more creepy.

"What the... Where are you? Mom?" Copies of his voice bounced off invisible walls. His treacherous heart beat faster. He froze. No one was there, it was just some gigantic void. It was creepy. Why was he here? Where was his mother? And everything else, for that matter.

"Hello?"

"Hello, yourself." He looked up. A strange looking guy was walking towards him. Deep blue, or maybe black skin. His eyes remined him of Sandra's -Sandra "White's", at least- whenever she used her powers. Green with black reptillian pupils. He smiled, showing off glowing green teeth. The green was uncanny.

 _...but at least someone is here._

"Relax, boy." He hald out a hand. "My name is Nergal. As much as I'd like to explain myself, and all of this, there is something very important that I have to tell you."

"What the..."

"First, your mother." The creature closed its eyes and clasped its arms around its back. "This may be hard to believe, but she was not human. She was a Nergal. A Nergal by transfer."

"Mom... Transfer? Nergal... what're you talking about?" His mother's death was the first thing on his mind. This would leave heavy emotional scar tissue. Not to talk of her contingency plan... He wanted to reassure the boy, comfort him until he was better, then gradually introduce this stuff. But he had to go through the process quickly. God knew what would happen if the boy didn't get the insstrucrions... Facts first, then coddling.

"Yes, Nergal by transfer. You see, she was a Nergal demon." He let that sink in. Again, there was no time. "A Nergal, whenever at the point of death, looks for a host to transfer their powers to. Their right eye is the physical catalyst. When the eye is accepted, the receiver undergoes a physical and mental change into a Nergal demon. During the process, they experience the former host's memories. But it isn't like a film; more like a highlight reel, one that you can go over more carefully in your spare time. But now, you need the abridged version."

He touched a hand to Ben's forhead. The memories started rolling. Babyhood. Childhood. Playing wirh friends. Questions. Feelings.

Notable events; her first crush, her first period, when she received her powers, learning to control them, meeting his father, dating, marriage, the honeymoon...

Birth. Watching little Ben grow up. Watching him play video games, worry he doesn't get out enough, convincing him to join the soccer team and resume the instrument classes...

Worry. Ben was sneaking out and coming back late, always with a covenient excuse...

Outrage. Fear. Awe. The heroics revealed.

A blur.

Outright panic when the Invasion started. Worry. Ben was going to fight in the war. Panic. Calm. Deciding to make a clone to take care of Carl, and coming to monitor Ben... Hoping he would understand why she did this...

Ben blinked, then his eyes filled with tears. His mother loved him so much... to this extent...

Nergal comforted the boy as he broke down, reassuring him. When he recovered, he knew that time was ticking. He coukdn't keep the boy here much longer, time bubble or no. The dimension shifted, and Ben disappeared...

The battlefield was quiet. The soldiers who had been tossed backwards since the beginning of the fight inched further backwards, scared by the turn of events.

First an ambush, by an army of Ball-Peen Meanies, Mean Behemoths and Caterplugs, then an explosion, and the Beast was there.

Most monsters had names, like the aforementioned three. Then there were others like Fusion Spawns, Soulo Shells, Death Nettles, Bad Maxes and a host of others. Most were mutations of Spawns that came in contact with objects. The aforementioned ones were permanently mutated and stabilized.

But a new type had come recently. They sampled things at random, forming a body, like most monsters. But after being destabilized, they were still functional. They could still go, absorb other objects, and attack. They were popping up in several places, and it seemed well-nigh impossible to kill them. Nobody could tell if Fuse or Fusion Dexter was creating them. All they knew was that those things were dangerous. The Beast was one of them. A green, sloppy mess of garbage cans, old, rusty cars, a crane and several chunks of buldings. Somehow, it had developed eyes. But unlike most of the amalgams, that sometimes collapsed under their own weight, this one could actually hold itself together. And, it was dangerous. Smashing things might seem routine, but this thing seemed to have enough brain to aim precisely where to smash things. It had racked up a very high killcount.

To say it was scary was an understatement. Fuse seemed to have developed a new plan on how to destroy the earth with those things. They could take them down, but they couldn't take them out.

They needed to get it down and make it stay down. So, for this particular problem case, they decided to send in their strongest hitters: the Ben10 faction. The recruits had been scared, but pushed onwards, encouraged by seeing their hero cut a clean line through the monsters and going in, with Sandra White, a well-known recruit, to kill the monster. They fought as hard as they could, their characteristic thorough job fueled by adrenaline.

Then Ben got an eye ripped out and Sandra was ripped apart.

The adrenaline left, and they started losing manpower. It was a miracle they pulled through it. Only around half of the recruits were left. And they saw their hero strangled by Sandra's tentacles, after she'd morphed into something else.

Needless to say, nobody was going in there. Especially not when the moster was leering over an unconscious Ben 10, reaedy to slam a car over him, then go to them. Then the ground erupted in flames, and the Beast was going to regret ever being created.

Some gigantic monster sprouted from where Ben had once been. Black and green with traces of white and red with sharp green fangs too large for its mouth. Some kind of dragon. But it was wrong. Very wrong. It twisted in abnormal ways and its limns were long and overly thin. The entire thing looked deforned...

...and the unholy smile on its face was not helping its case. Tentacles sprouted from its back where its wings should have been. A single tentacle slid out from the writhing mass and latched around the Beast's neck.

The unholy sounds that came from the Beast's maw seemed to come from the deepest pit of hell.


	3. 3 A Flash of Normality

**CHAPTER THREE**

 **Quick Author's Note:** I'm back! And sorry for any bad spelling or grammar. Long story short, my laptop has a problem with its hard drive, so I' m using my tablet. Chapter One was crap because I used Polaris Office, copied the chapter and had to go through NASTY formatring nonsense. Quickoffice is what I'm using now, and only... around 2 days ago I found out it had spellcheck. So please try to forgive me for that nonsense I did. So, enough rambling, on with the story!

* * *

...nobody could believe it. First the Beast, the monster that had been proving itself time and time again to be a deadly creature, had started making its way through Washington. The place was evacuated, and an army sent to bring it down, if not for good, then for some time. Then a completely unexpected twist: an ambush.

Were the creatures smart enough to plan? Was Fuse giving them direct orders? If not, who was the go-between? Nobody knew. But the Wielder of the Omnitrix and Sandra White had gotten through. They may not have been able to kill it, but they could do something, at least. But from that point onward, things turned for the worst.

The sudden facial mutilation and the gory dismemberment... And then an abomination. It didn't even stop at the Beast, it stared draining energy from everything it could find, monster or human.

Eventually, countermeasures were needed. The ultimate Deus Ex Machina. The strongest magic-users they could find were hired. Instructions given: take it DOWN, but don't take it OUT. So they did.

They overwhelmed it and managed to destroy it. Call it murder, call it exorcism; anything you like. But they ended up roasting it to death. The ultimate irony. A dragon dying by fire. That made as much sense as fire demon getting ill with a fever. It was absurd, but it worked (in both cases).

But they found something in the bones. A very small something.

It was where the heart would've been. Suspended by some kind of levitation, an unconscious Ben10, curled into a ball as if he was sleeping... with two trails of tears on his face.

Even the most stone-hearted people had to at least look twice at the scene.

After he'd been hustled down to HQ Medical, it was determined that he wouldn't be waking up anytime soon, though his vital signs were stable. The boy needed sleep. Sleep and light duty for around a month ought to do it. Some people would be fine doing extra work in this kind of situation. Problem was, the boy didn't seem to want to wake up. Not that anyone could blame him.

Planet Fusion, the sewage green planet that had appeared at the horizon over five years ago, was killing the Earth.

The mastermind behind it all, Lord Fuse, had destroyed several galaxies before, gaining power as he conquered planets. But the rogue had recently decided to start on the Milky Way Galaxy. Some alien planets had been decimated, refugees barely managing to escape to other planets while Planet Fusion marched on.

Then they targeted the Solar System. All of the uninhabited planets had been sucked into the large green monstrosity, destroying anything there, whether it be planet rovers or satellites.

Amazingly, the moon had been spared. Though, it soon became obvious that Luna was going to be obliterated as well as the planet she orbited. Everything had been turned upside down when the planet came. The government reacted quickly. All the neighborhood heroes, superheroes and ultra-super heroes had been recruited within the space of two weeks.

They had instantly formed the WPA, short for World Protection Agency. Stupid? Bland? Generic? It may not have been a snazzy name, but it summed it up. From the little sociopath Mandy to the arrogant pride of Ben Tennyson down to the bizarre group of Fosters, people were pulled in, hero and villain alike. From the redundant Mojo Jojo to the melodramtic, horrific being Him, there was help. Everyone had to put their differences aside, no matter what.

You wanted to brutally kill your arch rival? Wanted to break them? Wanted to do the unspeakable to them? Then you'd better cooperate to save the world before Fuse's monsters brutally murdered you both. That was the ultimatum. Everyone agreed, no matter how halfheartedly.

But there had been problems lately. Maybe because the war was getting hopeless. Maybe because of the massive death toll every day. Maybe the desperation that had driven them all together was wearing off. Nobody cared what it was by this point, they just knew that deep down, the WPA was falling apart.

The recruits were becoming lax, dull. Nobody could blame them then the heroes who had inspired them were the ones saying that it was hopeless. The spark of optimism was dying out.

DeeDee may not have been a philosopher, but a simpler version of it was driving her to visit her little brother, Dexter.

Dexter. Dexter Utonium. The same boy who had started turning the tides of weaponry, giving the Earth a chance to defend itself. Creating alien technology in Earth. The Null-Void laser. It disrupted the Fusion matter, killing the monsters. Added to that, he was developing several other weapons.

Some of the smartest minds on Earth and the galaxy at large were gathering on Earth to stop the invasion. Earth's fighters weren't slacking off either. But looking at the present, everything was going downhill. So DeeDee decided to check on Dexter. She had to make sure he was okay. She was one of the few people apart from the Utoniums and some elect individulals who cared about him. But most of them were busy.

She pirouetted through the blast doors that separated the lab from the rest of the world with ease, as usual, managing to avoid setting off the alarms. She looked around the laboratory for her redheaded genius little brother, humming a little as she did so. True to form, she found him fiddling with some controls. It was a control board for something, but she didn't know what. Another robot, maybe? A laser?

"Hi, Dexter," she chirped, standing behind him.

"What-" the boy genius turned around, surprised, then saw his visitor.

"Hello to you too, DeeDee," he drawled in his psuedo-Russian accent.

"Whatcha doin'?" she asked, her eyes darting around, looking at all the buttons, dials and switches.

"Working on an important project."

"Ooh, goody!" she pranced through the laboratory, barely missing containers of various chemicals and paperwork.

"What's it about? Lasers or robots or something else?"

"Lasers. And stop dancing around! You could knock something over!" DeeDee obliged, walking instead of dancing. Her ballet flats gave those strange squishing sounds that Dexter hd unwillingly grown familiar with during his childhood. He wondered about them briefly, then turned back to his work.

"It's a super-big laser, right? What's it for?" And his effort was truncated.

"Yes, it is large. And its purpose is to defend this planet from Fuse."

"So, where is it? You're working on the control panel thing. Where is it?"

Dexter didn't answer. The laser was in the laboratory, but the last thing he needed was to have DeeDee prance around to look at it. Mostly because she would manage to put it on. The things in this laboratory were too expensive to vaporize.

"Where is it?"

"That is none of your business, DeeDee."

That did not deter her. She merely looked at the control panel more closely, looking for something. Now, DeeDee was no hawk. The incident when she mistook a baby turtle for a baby bird still in its shell proved that. Not mentioning that she mistook a hawk for a baby turtle when it landed with a crushed trash can on its back by the end of the day.

Her vision may have been 20/20, but her imagination could really obscure things. And she was no scientist. However, whenever she applied herself, she could observe things quite well. She did so now, scanning the control panel for something familiar...

Dexter sighed, he ignored his sister as best as he could, even though experience told him that she would continue being a pest until he gave her attention. Hopefully this might be one of the rare times she left him alone. It was not to be...

"Ooh, what does this button do?" Her hand rested over a big red button. Her index finger was pointed straight at it.

Now, common sense would tell anyone to run away from those kinds of buttons. DeeDee, despite Dexter's insinuations to the contrary, knew it was a bad idea. But there was a reason for it. A very good reason.

"DeeDee! Get away from that!" And so the chase began. DeeDee pretended to want to look at and hold several things (coincidentally, the most dangerous or expensive things) while Dexter yelled at her to Stop.

At the end of it all, DeeDee left, giggling, as her little brother chased her out. It always ended that way. Both siblings may not have gotten along, but that old routine was something they could still depend on, even in this war.

Dexter muttered something mean-spirited under his breath as the last of the pink tutu disappeared. He didn't mean it, however. That one chase did not end in any harm to his projects, but it put a sense of normalcy into him. A sense of normalcy that was desperately needed.

It may have been a relic from their childhood that was rarely exploited nowadays, but it was a bit of a welcome change to all of the pressure he had been facing. Sometimes he wondered if the army thought he was a machine. Yes, he developed weapons. No, he couldn't just spawn weapons at random. He had to develop them, fine tune them and before he could put them into production.

He had a sneaking suspicion that the Army was turning into Dexlab-weapon hoarders, with the way they were pressuring him these days. Genius or no, he was still thirteen years old.

Thirteen. It was absurd. The main financial backing for the war was a company started up by a thirteen year old. The best technology you could find on the market was made by a thirteen year old. One of the targets Fuse wanted to eliminate first was a thirteen year old. Thirteen years old, and he was the prime target of a potentially psychopathic warlord who had no idea of what failure was. Thirteen, and he had to deal with a perverse version of himself...

He shuddered, quicky derailing that train of thought. At least something was normal, in the midst of all of the abnormal things. That was one thing DeeDee was good for. He walked back to his work, one of the other things that was normal.

After all, when one of your very few friends- your best friend at any rate -turned into an otherworldly entity and destroyed everything within its grasp for two weeks, then was forcefully shut down, it tended to jar one. And there was foreboding that this was the tip of the iceberg.

The fabric of unity was getting frayed in the WPA day by day. That Incident added a large cut in it. Even Dexter saw it, and seeing how socially awkward he was, that was saying something. Everyone was on edge, daring the next calamity to happen. Watching and waiting...

He hoped that things would resolve themselves soon, and fast. Without the fabric of unity holding the defense together, the Earth would be conquered easily. Then again, if whishes were horses, beggars would ride.

He went back to his work. None of that was his business. The weapons would not go and develop themselves, now would they?


End file.
